


With the Dark Horses

by luciferinasundaysuit



Series: Music City 'Verse [4]
Category: Band of Brothers, Generation Kill, The Pacific - Fandom
Genre: Alternate Universe - Music & Bands, M/M, Unresolved Sexual Tension
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-03-22
Updated: 2012-03-22
Packaged: 2017-11-02 09:07:01
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,354
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/367317
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/luciferinasundaysuit/pseuds/luciferinasundaysuit
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Joe Liebgott was always running, even when he was staying in one place.</p>
            </blockquote>





	With the Dark Horses

Snafu always said that most folks were either running from something or toward something. Joe usually told him he was a cynical fucker and poured another drink for the paying customers, but the Cajun bastard had a point. 

Joe was always running, even when he was standing still. He’d been in Nashville for almost four years now, and he was still running. He was running from who he had been, running toward who he wanted to be. He didn’t want to be Joe Liebgott, the next big thing who had faded into obscurity. He wanted to be Joe Liebgott, bar owner. 

All he wanted was anonymity. He wanted to forget about the thousand pieces of his shattered dreams and the record label in LA where they had scattered across the floor. It would have been easier if he hadn’t gotten Los Angeles tattooed on his arm, but he still made a valiant effort. 

When the doctors had told him he couldn’t sing anymore and his label had dropped him, he’d fled east with no real destination in mind, and somehow, he’d ended up in the South. He kicked around Memphis for a while, made a trip down to Clarksdale to pay his respects to the blues, drank a few beers on Robert Johnson’s grave, and then he went further South to New Orleans to spend a little time with jazz. He let some girl drag him to Morgan City to see the oldest recording studio in Louisiana, and he wound up watching two seventeen year olds sing in a bar off the highway. The place was full of whispers about them taking the music world by storm, but Joe had heard that song before. Still, they were good. Damn good.

Less than a month after that, he got his head out of his ass and joined the Army. There was a war on, or so they said, and he figured he best do his part. It wasn’t like he had anything better to do. The three years he spent in the desert pouring sand out of his boots were another thing he didn’t like to think about. He’d gotten so angry, so vicious, at the thought of Americans dying, of woman being beaten and raped. He’d scared himself, or so he realized on the few occasions that he was truly honest about his state of mind. All that hate had been toxic, eating away at him. 

He hadn’t felt like a man again for about a year after he got home, wherever that was. He’d gone to Nashville because he needed the music to heal, after he’d gone home to San Francisco and seen his mother.

One night, he stumbled into Mathilda’s, a bar owned by a retired Marine. He and Gunny had talked over beers and occasionally over something stronger, and Joe had found his way back to humanity one night at a time. He started working as a bartender. Come to find out, he was good at it. He could smile just right and get tips that others couldn’t or jump in and break up a fight when the bouncer needed a hand. Bull was a big ole country boy, but he was still only one man.

When Gunny started to feel the siren call of Texas, Joe was the logical choice to take over. Gunny sold the bar to him dirt cheap and gave him his blessing to change the name.

“Make it yours, boy,” he’d said. “As long as you don’t take down my sound booth.”

Gunny was attached to the faded red pickup cab he’d turned in a booth, and Joe promised to leave it, even though it offended all of his sensibilities.

As soon as Gunny headed west, Joe renamed the place The Screaming Eagle. It was his now, his place, his home. He moved into the loft upstairs that had been Gunny’s, and he hired an aspiring blues singer, Hoosier Smith, to be his other bartender, since the one that had been working there took off when Gunny left. Within a matter of months, he and Hoosier had established a close friendship based on antagonism and innuendo. Hoosier moved into the loft with him because Joe figured it was probably better for him to have a roommate. He had a tendency to withdraw, and that shit was bad for business.

In the fall of 2010, a band called The Bayou Boys played at The Screaming Eagle for the first time. Two of them were Marines turned college students, and two of them were the Cajun duo he’d see that night in Morgan City. If they’d sounded damn good on their own, they sounded fantastic with the other two. Their brand of music wasn’t mainstream country, not by a long shot. The lead singer, Gene Roe, was one of those that worshiped at the church of music. Snafu Shelton, the lead guitarist, lived for pushing boundaries. Chuckler Juergens, the bass player, just wanted to make music. Burgin, the drummer who almost never used his first name, played like a man possessed. The Cajuns added flair, leaning a tad zydeco. Juergens and Burgin were a bit folk. The four of them sounded a little rock n’ roll. They reminded Joe of Gram Parsons, if he had been raised by gators in a swamp in south Louisiana.

One year later, they were the house band, switching off with Hoosier. They’d added a steel guitar played by a songwriter with a gypsy’s soul and a Marine‘s heart, Eddie Jones, as well as a fiddle playing farm boy, Walt Hasser. Their opening acts were Reformation, a husband and wife folk duo, and Bolt Action Rifle, a classic country duo made up of two high school kids. Joe thought he’d done pretty well for himself, setting up a place for him to both grow and hide from his past. If only Shelton didn’t get under his skin like he did, it would be perfect.

Contrary to popular belief, there really wasn’t anything going on between Joe and Hoosier. There’d been one kiss aided by tequila, but in the light of day, they really were just excessively flirtatious friends. Shelton, though, he went right past flirtatious and into baiting territory. At least, on the nights when he wasn’t trying to pick a fight.

After shows, everyone went next door to Flo’s Place, and the angel that was Florence Risely would open her kitchen to them, taking mercy on their poor, hungry souls. Joe was always the last one ready to go, and Snafu was always the one to see if he planned on tagging along.

“You comin’ Liebgott?” he’d say.  
The set of his mouth would tell Joe that he noticed the innuendo as soon as he’d said it and didn’t regret his word choice.

Joe would look up from wiping the bar and let his expression tell Snafu that noticed but wasn’t going to respond, while also letting him know that he realized that his look defeated the purpose of not addressing what had been said. Never had anyone said that Joseph Liebgott couldn’t do subtlety when he damn well wanted to.

The smile he always gave Snafu was like seduction dancing on the edge of a blade.

“Oh, I just might, Shelton,” he’d answer. 

Two could play at that game.

Shelton would pause, and Joe would know he was thinking that Gene was right, that flirting with the man who signed your checks was a terrible idea, but that meant he was probably going to do it anyway.

Joe would smile that sharp, dirty smile again, telling Snafu that he was also aware that the dance they had going was a fool’s errand.

Somewhere in the rehearsals, sound checks, busy nights, long afternoons, and insanity, he and Shelton has carved out a little routine of sexual tension that shouldn’t go anywhere but might. Joe knew it was a bad idea, but he’d never been one to walk away. Except, you know, from his past. All he knew for sure is that if he saw Hoosier betting on it, he’d kick his ass.

**Author's Note:**

> Part of Music City 'Verse. Follows Living in a Life That Few Could Understand. Title take from the song "Get Off on the Pain" by Gary Allan.


End file.
